Here is a list of symptomatic brainstuff; if people would like to take a look and offer suggestions of what this all might be symptomatic of, that would be neat. (Mostly for trying to make sense of my own brain.) (I realise this is really long. >_<) ASD traits (diagnosed) Sensory issues: hypersensitivity to light and sound and aversion to both; aversion to certain smells and textures and to light touches; sensory seeking for deep pressure and certain strong tastes (like whiskey or lemon juice) and some music (mostly metal and rock; I find certain genres of metal extremely soothing and others useful for other moods). Bodily awareness issues: lack of awareness of hunger or thirst unless prompted. Often lack of awareness of locality of pain/bodily distress or nature of such unless prompted to introspection (ex: ‘I feel weird’ ‘how?’ ‘uh… my head hurts and my stomach feels weird?’ or ‘would you like me to pop your back? you seem like it hurts’ ‘oh wow yes it does that would be nice I didn’t realise that’). Possibly related to dissociation, below. Emotional awareness issues: problems being aware of emotions unless prompted, especially the reasons behind emotions. Possible lack of emotional range; never quite sure because what is normal and what is just depression forever? Communication issues: lots of miscommunication, for no reason I can really pick up on, save that I misunderstand people or they misunderstand me a lot. I just put this down to different communicational styles. Lack of understanding of subtext and underlying assumptions. Problems interpreting body language and tone of voice; I have to learn them for each individual person (in theory) and mostly can’t (due to volume of info and most people being unwilling to explain their body language and tones of voice). Atypical body language myself (including but not limited to Eye Contact Is Terrible). Often lack of understanding of metaphor or suchlike, especially the kind used in song lyrics. Executive function issues: difficulty transitioning from one task to another, difficulty working out how to start things or do things with too many steps. Tendency to just stand and stare when trying to do something and confused about how to. Difficulty remembering to do things or just getting myself to do them. Stimming: sensory seeking (see above), flapping, fidgeting constantly, etc. (do not give me anything that spins or makes noise you will never hear the end of it.) Cognitive differences: This is hard to describe, but just thinking differently, in a way that makes other autistic people much easier to comprehend than neurotypicals (and allistic neuroatypical people are also easier to comprehend, probably because they are also used to communicational difficulties). Lots of emphasis on logic and pattern-matching and little emphasis on ‘feelings’ and emotions, etc. Possibly related to empathy (see below). Special interests: I’m never quite sure about this. I do get obsessively interested in things, but this changes a lot, mostly because my default is ‘obsessively interested in pretty much everything’. I imagine my long-standing interest of How People Think and How Do Brains Work might qualify, for one. Anxiety traits (sorta diagnosed) General baseline of anxiety which often serves as a mood tracker; that is, I can tell if I am sliding into depression, experiencing overload, getting sick, or whatever, by my baseline anxiety rising from ‘not really a problem’ to ‘oh shit everything is scary’. Getting super watchful and trying to look out for everything and be aware of everything just in case, sometimes. Social anxiety: probably related to autism in some cases (since people are unpredictable and crowds are overstimulating) and probably to abuse in others (people might suddenly flip out at you for no reason you can discern! you don’t deserve to have opinions or talk!). Latter is easier to overcome than the former, since I can tell myself that not everyone is my parents, but I can’t tell myself with any degree of truth that most people aren’t neurotypical. OCD-like things: dirt is bad and will kill you, and you must wash your hands many times to be sure that you are clean. if you step on a crack on the pavement with one foot you have to step on another with the other foot. did you really lock the door? things like that. [I have mostly got a hold on the door-locking one just because I got so pissed off about having to go back to the front door after I’d gone some way down the road so often to check whether it was locked.] Related a little to anorexia, below. Liable to panic attacks from sensory overload or too much anxiety from any other trigger (with all the symptoms except ‘patient thinks they are dying’ because I have them too damn often to still think that I’m dying). Frequent depression: most of the past four years has been a (series of) major depressive episode(s), and before that I was… kind of depressed for most of my life? It’s hard to explain without writing up a whole abuse post, but suffice it to say, much experience. (By now, depressive episodes generally don’t show up as overwhelming sadness and pain, but some anhedonia and the cognitive effects. I think this is because I got used to dealing with it and have coping mechanisms, so the feelings of sadness and fear from being trapped and having no-one to help are less.) Former self-harm and suicidal ideation/desire, though no attempts; those are gone since they were super maladaptive and I just will not put up with them anymore. (with much help from wife) [I never got diagnosed with MDD, but really should have, and got plenty of (non-working) meds for it.] Abuse leftovers Difficulties dealing with anger (self): I don’t really know how to be angry. I think this is because I have sufficiently internalised that if I am ever angry, I am wrong, and hurting the other person (and being wrong and hurting people makes you the Worst Person Ever), that I don’t really know how to feel anger at people or things beyond the kind of ‘you are a silly person on the internet’ frustration. Difficulties dealing with anger (other people): accepting that people can be angry at me and not hate me forever and think that I am the Worst Person Ever is hard. Accepting that I can fuck up and hurt people and not be the Worst Person Ever is hard. Work in progress, because this is super unsustainable as a mode of interacting with people. Difficulties recognising that my opinions and thoughts can be valid, and that I should not automatically agree with other people just because they disagreed with me and thus Must Be Right and I Must Be Wrong. Difficulties remembering that I do not actually need to try and manipulate or hint at people to get something I want; just asking is in fact acceptable and does not make you a selfish bitch. [there’s probably more in this section but this is what is identified and extant at this moment. These in and of themselves are not really, but they influence and are influenced by other mental illness stuff, so, shrug?] Former anorexia: linked to abuse and made worse by OCD-like stuff (that is, once I started feeling like I had to eat less, I had to eat all of the less nothing else was acceptable, and so on). This is in the past and shall remain there, godsdamnit; included for completeness. (Most of puberty involved restricted eating and the end involved flat-out anorexia; no wonder I’m fucked up physically!) Empathy issues: my affective empathy (feeling people’s feels) is extremely unreliable, and sufficiently overwhelming when it does happen that it severely impairs my ability to help (so honestly I prefer when it stays away). My cognitive empathy (working out what people are feeling from body language/other hints) also sucks unless there are obvious tells; I tend to go with intellectual empathy, both in the sense of working out what people are feeling by asking them if I’m unsure, and in the sense that I can intellectually feel bad if someone I care about is unhappy without actually feeling the emotion of sadness. (This lack of affective empathy means that most of my moral decisions are based on religion and logic, and I get kind of confused and uncomfortable when I remember that a lot of people base morality and other important decisions off feelings.) Dissociation/occasional hallucinations: I dissociate a fair amount, in the sense that I feel like I don’t exist, or that I exist behind a thick glass wall and the rest of the world is on the other side, or that I’m not really attached to my body, or that maybe I don’t really exist and no-one can perceive me. Scary distressing shit (honestly, the stuff in this section, and maybe the next two, upsets me probably more than everything else combined). Sometimes I wake up in the night and can’t get back to sleep because I feel like my body doesn’t exist and this is uncomfortable (this is solved by deep pressure and also comforting if comforting is available). Also, occasional hallucinations, most often olfactory or auditory (in the form of people talking too far away to hear their words); visual hallucinations are much rarer and have only happened a few times. (Overall, hallucinations happen a few times a month at the moment.) Permanence: I have problems remembering people exist if I am not seeing or interacting with them. (This leads to having friends who either also do that or don’t mind poking me if they want interaction). Sometimes, this extends to not being sure if someone exists if they are in a separate room, or sometimes if they are sitting right next to me. (they might be a hallucination! does anything really exist?) Also, I get confused sometimes that people move and do stuff even when I’m not in the room; my brain just kind of forgets that things and people exist when I’m not there. (The solution to a lot of this is touch: touch is the sense that is most real for me, and so if I am not sure if someone is real, I can hold their hand or hug them or whatever, and I trust that input. Same, incidentally, for when I am not sure if I exist.) Memory problems: my memory is unreliable and will forget things I need to know right now while remembering random tidbits of information I read years ago. Occasionally, also, it will manufacture fake memories (for example, I vividly remember what it felt like when I was trying to learn to drive. Problem: I have never tried to learn to drive and likely will not). This gets worse when under stress, which is probably normal; I kept forgetting all my appointments and tutorials last term of uni because I was tired and sick all the time and didn’t really have a memory. This is also interesting in conversations: on the one hand, I might listen to something you said and then forget it immediately afterwards, and on the other hand, I might suddenly reply to something you said a week ago. Mood stuff: my mood is fairly flexible (unless I’m actively panicking or upset, when it takes a while to calm down), so I can be happy one moment and Suddenly Terrible the next. On the flip side, sometimes I will have moods where I feel much more energetic than usual, like I can do anything and accomplish anything; like I actually understand sex and sexual attraction [note: I’m asexual, and if I tried not to be even in such moods, I’d fail; I just feel like I wouldn’t]; like I am the only thing that is real and everything else is fake, a paper set; like if I concentrate hard enough I could fly or shapeshift or bite someone’s throat out; like I don’t need food or sleep; like there is a red flame burning behind my eyes and clouding my vision [which is not actually clouded] etc. These generally only last a day or two (alas?). Sleep stuff: I have insomnia (have had to some degree since I was a child, but it’s gotten worse in the past few years) and nightmares 2-3 nights a week. (I’m led to believe that’s unusual. Mostly they are abuse-related nightmares, but not always.) Focus: I find myself either unable to concentrate on things very well or concentrating on One Thing for far far too long. Generally, I need to do at least two or three things at once, preferably with multiple sources of manageable sensory input (such as listening to music or a podcast when writing something or editing). I am probably forgetting stuff but I think that is most of it. And thank you for reading.
